


hollowed in thy name

by corpsesoldier



Series: The People's Tomb Fic Jam 2020 [3]
Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Discord: The People's Tomb (Locked Tomb Trilogy), Gen, I don't really know what to tag this as I just had some thoughts about colum, Pre-Canon, The People's Tomb Fic Jam: Scream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:41:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26779762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corpsesoldier/pseuds/corpsesoldier
Summary: Colum Asht's purpose is to be perfect.
Series: The People's Tomb Fic Jam 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1962700
Comments: 7
Kudos: 31





	hollowed in thy name

**Author's Note:**

> honestly this was originally going to lean more horror but I had some feelings about colum asht apparently
> 
> written for the discord jam prompt: "scream"

Colum Asht always knew his purpose. He had no opportunity not to know. One did not grow up on the Eighth, cocooned on all sides by unblemished white stone and immaculate white plex and unassailable white tile, without understanding one’s purpose. He did not spend cumulative days and weeks reading the Tome, poring over its endless strictures and guidelines, penances and punishments, without apprehending the mechanism at work. He did not suffer hours of seclusion memorizing lengthy passages for the slightest infraction, until even the sound of footsteps passing by the locked door was enough to make him weep in relief, without completely and utterly grasping the reason he had been brought into the universe.

Colum’s purpose was to be perfect. To be pure and holy and incorruptible. To be a vast reserve of calm and clarity amid the storm—the storm being detailed extensively in the Tome as all the hundreds of thousands of major and minor sins accumulated by the Nine Houses over the last myriad and all those which will continue to accumulate forever like funerary ash drifting down from a dull gray sky. To be the bulwark between foul liquid chaos and moral reason as clear and cold as recyc oxygen.

Colum was to be the ideal form of his House, right down to his genetic code and his blood type, so that when the time came he could serve his necromancer with all the stolid, unflinching dignity an Eighth cavalier could bring to bear.

But Colum’s purpose was not his alone. He shared this great burden, this incomparable honor, with his older brothers. And Colum knew that was all for the best. That there were certain requirements a cavalier was expected to have bred into them. It would be no fault of his own if (when?) he was rejected should the Eighth scion not match him precisely, it was an honor to even be considered, please, Colum, you’re being _hysterical_ —

Colum felt his color rise, painfully obvious against his milk white skin. He did not feel that he was being hysterical. But the adult chastising him, either a templar or a priest or even his own mother, standing tall in their unruffled composure, surely they knew better. And they would always relent when Colum went quiet, eyes wide and beseeching, hoping to be shown the proper course of action. The templars would smile indulgently and recommend passages for further study. The priests would offer to pray with him until his doubts were naught but echoes shattered by the drumming ritual words. His mother might even deign to rest her hand upon his head, might look down at his obediently silent face and say “You will make a very fine cavalier.”

That would always soothe him.

Still, it did not seem fair to him that his brothers acted as though they were cavalier primary already. Perhaps he was not so strong as Anndrais, not so quick as his eldest brother was with his pale rapier and offhand claws. None of the three were small children, but Anndrais was always biggest and seemed to think this made him best. He said as much whenever he knocked Colum down during a practice bout and laid his heavy boot on his brother’s chest. He was too smart to smirk where their instructor might see them, but Colum could still read it in his eyes.

And again, perhaps he was not as clever as Beathan, who could quote scripture word for word with only a glance. Who had moved on from studying solely the Tome at eight years old, had waded into the endless discussions and interpretations of the Tome, to lengthy accounts of crimes committed and sentences handed down, all written by templar scholars long dead. His portion of the desk in their quarters was always stacked high with book bound in creamy white leather. Beathan would draw forth an obscure ruling for Colum’s endless moral failings from the neatly organized drawer of his mind the same way Anndrais might draw his rapier, and often his remarks hit more accurately and cut more deeply.

There had to be more to being a cavalier, Colum believed, than swordplay and quick wit. 

He persisted doggedly in his studies despite only feeling, on a good day, second best. He lost bout after bout against Anndrais. He endured Beathan’s verbal lashings disguised as concern for the health of his soul. And always Colum kept one eye on the other cavaliers of his House, one half step behind their necromancers—their straight shoulders and even gaits and blank, bloodless faces. 

When his mother looked at him with vague disappointment upon Colum’s failure to recall his latest lesson word-perfect, he simply dropped his eyes and resolved to do better. When Beathan caught him staring, red-cheeked, at another cavalier toweling off after a duel and called him lower than dog with the base urges to match, Colum did not let his tears of shame fall. When Anndrais laid open his collarbone with a quick flick of his rapier and soaked his white shirt with blood, Colum did not cry out. 

And when, at sixteen years old, Colum’s necromancer was born with blood that called to his, it felt like divine vindication. When he met the pale eyes of that curiously silent infant, his whole reason for being, he merely inclined his head respectfully and did not submit to the sin of pride.

He further did not submit when he moved out of the quarters he shared with his brothers for the room bequeathed to the cavalier primary of the Eighth House. He barely felt their resentful stares as he left with everything he owned cradled in his arms. His new cell was large enough for a single bed, a desk, and a wardrobe and it belonged only to him. 

He might have felt a prickle of pride, the barest hiss of temptation, on the day it was decreed that he and only he would bear the name Asht. His brothers knelt before the Master Templar and had their names, now little more than relics of false hope, stripped from them. Colum did not smile as they were given new names for their new lives, but he wanted to, and that was nearly as bad. He did penance for it later, alone in his cell, thinking only _Colum Asht, Colum Asht, Colum Asht._

Silas Octakiseron, heir to the House of the Eighth, his uncle and his necromancer, grew into a wan and humorless child. His pale eyes were always serious, even a bit judgemental, as though with a glance he could tell the weight of your soul. But he was polite and dutiful and hung on Colum’s every word like he read straight from the Tome itself. It was an honor to advise the Eighth House scion. Colum, barely more than a teenager himself, tried to speak with the same gravity and wisdom he had heard in the reigning Master Templar’s voice. 

Sometimes, under that piercing stare, he felt doubt. Felt that he was not worthy of Silas’ unrestrained trust. Sometimes he wished that Silas would attend to his instructors and priests with the same fervent desire to learn and to impress, because Colum Asht did not know the first thing about what it meant to be either necromancer or leader, judge or executioner. But then Silas would walk up to him with careful restraint—the boy never ran—and take Colum’s large hand and insist he show his cavalier the new necromantic theorem he had learned, and the shine in Silas’ eyes was like the light of Dominicus.

When he was all of six years old, Silas looked up at Colum and said, with his solemn voice that even then was oddly deep for a boy his age, “My masters say it’s time I begin siphoning.”

Colum simply nodded. That was his purpose above all others. To be a well of energy, consecrated and pure and powerful, for his necromancer to draw from. He had hollowed himself out in the pursuit of nothing less. 

And so Colum was not afraid when his necromancer stood before him. Colum had not been afraid of anything for a long time. He went to his knees on the padded floor of a training room and even still, he towered over Silas. He smiled down at him encouragingly. The boy’s brows were drawn together in concentration but he relaxed minutely, and perhaps a corner of his mouth even lifted in answer. They could do this. They were made for each other.

Silas reached up one tiny hand and placed it against Colum’s neck and pulled—

And Colum _screamed_.

He had been siphoned before. He’d been training with other Eighth necromancers since he was a child. He was well-acquainted with the gray cold and the way each breath came as though through a heavy cloth and the deep terrible suction like air venting into space. This felt nothing like that.

It felt like Silas reached inside him, to the place his soul was stitched into his meat and ripped up the seam. One moment Colum was there in his body and he was screaming and he saw Silas’ eyes widen in fear, and then Colum was gone.

It was hard to remember exactly what happened next. It was always hard to remember, afterward. He was somewhere else. The air was cold and damp. There was no light, but it was not dark. Quite close by he could hear a rhythmic crashing sound like— _like waves,_ he thought wildly, despite never having seen a large body of water in his life. Further away, and curiously muffled, there was the sound of millions upon millions of voices screaming in discordant unison.

This did not disturb him much, even though a part of him thought it really ought to. He felt like someone had switched off parts of his brain. 

After a long, desolate moment, Colum wondered if he might be dead.

Then all at once, he wasn’t. He was kneeling on the training room floor. There was breath in his lungs and blood in his veins. He was shivering.

And Silas was clinging to the front of his shirt, tears streaming down his cheeks, hiccuping, “I bid you—I b-bid you return—I bid—I bid—”

“Si,” Colum croaked. Silas turned his hot, wet eyes up to Colum, gave a shuddery sigh, and threw his arms around Colum’s thick neck.

“You sounded so scared,” Silas said. Colum could feel tears against his skin. “And then you were gone. I thought...I thought I killed you.” And then the boy could say no more. 

Colum could only hold him, mute and numb as the child who had torn his soul clean out of his body sobbed into his shoulder. Something came loose inside him that day. It never really settled back into place.

He was aware that he had failed, and failed terribly. He was meant to be whole and unmoveable, of incorruptible mind and body, and yet he had bleated at the merest touch of his necromancer’s holy power. His instructors eyed him with their disappointment drawing lines around their mouths. When Beathan smirked at him as they passed in the hall, Colum squared his shoulders and met his eyes and prayed his face didn’t look as hot as it felt.

But his failure was most apparent in his necromancer’s reaction: Silas refused to siphon from him.

“Master Octakiseron,” Colum said, sitting across the table from him. The boy had his head bent over a thick necromantic text, running his finger beneath the words as he read. His shoulders stiffened at the sound of Colum’s voice, but he did not look up.

“Silas,” Colum tried again. “You can not keep avoiding this.”

“I am not avoiding anything,” Silas said levelly. “I am studying. I may have done something wrong. I need to learn more before my next attempt.”

“What you need,” Colum said, reaching over to slide the book out of Silas’ hands, “is practice.”

Silas tried to meet his gaze with academic detachment, but Colum could see the plea in his eyes.

“You did nothing wrong, Si,” Colum continued, more softly. “The fault was mine. I should have been stronger. I will be stronger. Please let me prove it to you.”

Silas was wringing his small hands together, turning his knuckles an even starker white. He hesitated, but in the end Colum was an adult, and don’t adults always know best?

“You promise to tell me if I...if I hurt you?”

Colum looked down at his necromancer, at this boy that trusted him utterly, even when Colum had proved himself unworthy of his trust. He met Silas’ eyes, and he lied. 

“I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> you can come say hi on tumblr [here!](https://corpsesoldier.tumblr.com)


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